Airliners Were Too Close, But Danger Is Disputed

February 06, 1986|By Gary Washburn, Transportation writer.

Two passenger jets, one leaving O`Hare International Airport, the other leaving Midway Airport, came too close to each other shortly after taking off Jan. 20, the Federal Aviation Administration reported Wednesday.

But the distance separating the planes and the danger facing passengers on the planes were in dispute.

The FAA said computer records show the planes were 1.7 miles apart at their closest. But the pilot of one of the jets, an American Airlines Boeing 727, has estimated that he passed within 300 feet of the second plane, according to an airlines spokesman.

FAA regulations call for a minimum horizontal separation of 5 miles if planes are at the same altitude.

The incident took place as American Flight 169, bound from O`Hare to Acapulco, and Midway Airlines Flight 157, a DC-9 headed from Midway Airport to Kansas City, both reached an altitude of about 5,000 feet 10 miles southwest of O`Hare, said Mort Edelstein, a spokesman in the FAA`s Great Lakes regional office.

Edelstein said that an error by the controller monitoring the two jets appears to have led to the inadequate separation. An investigation is underway, he reported. He said he knows of no near-collision report filed with the FAA either by American or Midway.

``We don`t consider it to be life-threatening,`` he said of the incident. But an American spokesman gave the following account:

The American jet, ascending from O`Hare, ``was cleared by air traffic control to climb to to 23,000 feet,`` he said. ``At 5,100 feet, the pilot was ordered to level off and go to 4,000, and at that point he passed under the DC-9 by about 300 feet or so.``

The spokesman declined to characterize the dangerousness of the incident, but he said, ``That`s very close, obviously, as fast as aircraft are traveling.``

The American pilot reportedly later filed an internal report on the incident.

``Something happened so that the captain didn`t get information or received the wrong information,`` the American spokesman said. ``Somewhere there was a burp in the air traffic control system.``

David Armstrong, a Midway spokesman, said that the crew of Flight 157 was interviewed, but ``they reported no abnormal operation.``

The two airlines were unable to say how many passengers were aboard the planes.

Congressional safety critics have charged that the air traffic control system, still suffering the effects of a strike by controllers in 1981, fails to provide an adequate level of safety.